Have you ever heard of group emotional intelligence?
In this blog, we talked at length about Emotional Intelligence and all its main competences:
The personal emotional skills to excel as a person and social emotional skills to excel in relationships with others.
We have also seen the whole journey to develop your emotional intelligence and become a resounding leader.
We are talking about an effective leader who, by making the most of his emotional skills, knows how to manage himself and knows how to relate better with the people he leads.
But in a leadership process there is no leader without the team!
I share with you an excerpt in the parts, so that you can understand how, when you insert a new person in a group, that person can undermine the emotional group intelligence of the team and lower it.
Not all your people have a developed emotional intelligence and surely, it will have happened to you that the situation that I presented to you, in reality, is much more complicated.
If you focus on efforts to increase your people’s individual emotional intelligence, but also group emotional intelligence, you can derive many benefits from the best teamwork to reach your OKRS.
Let’s see why and how to do it!
The advantages of emotional intelligence
“Emotional Intelligence is in part the ability to recognize and control one’s emotions, and to understand what emotions say.
Emotional Intelligence is also knowing how to recognize the emotional needs and needs of others and respond appropriately.”
In simple words, Emotional Intelligence determines self-awareness and social skills with people.
“Studies and experiments show that when emotionally intelligent people work together, they have the ability to wipe out minor conflicts to focus on the interests and goals of the team. They can cope well with the most serious conflicts and can find ideas for growth from any disagreement that may arise.
It is possible, however, that people without or with low emotional intelligence, fail to realize their full potential as individuals, or work well within a group.”
How to increase group emotional intelligence
The word Emotional Intelligence sounds like something innate in people. However, scientific research shows that you can develop this skill in your team members even in a short time to achieve your OKR.
Start with yourself
One of the best ways to help your people develop emotional intelligence is to lead by example. So, start by making sure you guide others with emotional intelligence. This means having awareness of one’s thoughts and feelings, and then managing them, so as to positively influence other people.
Report the benefits
Team members might be more open to developing their emotional intelligence if you tell them the benefits they can expect.
Let your team members know how to develop their emotional intelligence and benefit from it, both personally and professionally.
Develops self-awareness
Self-awareness is the most important competence of emotional intelligence. People who are self-aware understand their own thoughts and emotions, as well as understand how their actions affect others around them.
Encourage your team members to keep a daily newspaper. Even just writing for five minutes a day can help people develop self-awareness.
You can also help team members build their awareness by asking for their opinions on decisions, especially people who don’t speak often. When you ask for a person’s thoughts and feelings, make him stop and examine how he really feels. This can lead to greater self-awareness over time.
It is also important to take the time to talk about difficult situations or problems, addressing the resulting emotions. This can also be done informally during lunch. The more you encourage team members to open up and talk about what they are thinking and feeling, the more they will be able to develop self-awareness.
Strengthens communication
People with high strength usually have excellent communication skills.
Develop better communication in your team by teaching people how to understand body language.
Another important communication tool, often overlooked, is listening. Teach your entire team how to use active listening skills and how to respect other people when they speak.
Finally, if you think your group does not analyze and discuss decisions completely, be sure to question their decisions. Play the devil’s lawyer and force the hand on the argument. Ask if everyone has accepted, and furthermore, encourage quieter team members to talk.
Build optimism
The ability to think positively is an important part of emotional intelligence. You can help your people think positively by stopping behaviors or self-sabotaging statements.
Keep in mind that positive attitude does not mean ignoring bad news and avoiding problems. It means just accepting bad news and rationally deciding how to handle it, as well as looking for the good side in every situation and learning from every mistake.
Encourages healthy conflict
People with high emotional intelligence know how to engage in conflict in a healthy way, where everyone’s perspective is respected when their opinions are communicated. This type of conflict can strengthen people individually and within a group, helping personal growth.
Teach your people good conflict resolution skills. It makes them understand that conflicts should never be personal and that anyone, when it is his turn, must get the full attention of everyone else. Set the basic rules, so that everyone knows what is and what is not correct behavior.
Set specific learning goals
Team members will have different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to their own. For example, some people may be poor communicators, others may have little self-awareness and some may lack empathy.
First, it helps each person to discover their strengths and weaknesses.
Next, set clear and specific goals through OKR Software to help each person work on their weaknesses.
Finally, be sure to provide constructive answers on each person’s progress, but remember to do so sensitively for team members who may have low emotional intelligence. A word of encouragement or useful observation will help a lot to keep the team members motivated.
Finally, I want to indicate to you some of my articles that can help you put into practice what is listed above, both to develop personal emotional intelligence and to develop group emotional intelligence.
